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BECKY TALYN at the University of Maine in Orono has a very special relationship with the fruit flies in her lab. She records their love songs and then plays them back to make the flies horny.

At first Feedback was a little worried to discover this. But Talyn insists her obsession with the erotic sounds made by male fruit flies' vibrating wings is purely academic. She is merely interested in animal communication.

She has recorded various male courtship songs which she plays back to females and wingless males held in a vial on top of a loudspeaker. Normally females will wait a long time before mating with mute males, but apparently her musical seduction speeds things up splendidly.

Fruit fly love songs consist of two parts, a creaky clicking and a low humming. Talyn has found that removing the low humming doesn't ruin the song's effect at all. "It's surprising ...

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